Local
Uproar after arrest of trans woman in D.C.
Activist Corado says aggressive police traumatized passengers
Ruby Corado said hostile D.C. police officers traumatized a group of young transgender and gay passengers in her SUV over the weekend. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Local LGBT activists on Facebook were in an uproar over the weekend when transgender advocate Ruby Corado posted a message claiming hostile D.C. police officers traumatized a group of young transgender and gay passengers in her SUV on Feb. 28 when they handcuffed and arrested a transgender woman for driving the vehicle without a valid license.
“I sat in my car as a passenger as we are driving my clients home after a support group when a police officer stopped us and in three minutes I witness a D.C. police officer turn into a very homo-transphobic cop,” Corado wrote in her Facebook posting.
Activists commenting on the incident noted it took place less than a week after Police Chief Cathy Lanier released a report conducted by an independent task force that found shortcomings in the department’s dealings with the transgender community.
Sgt. Matthew Mahl, supervisor of the department’s Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit, told the Blade he looked into the matter after speaking with Corado and reading her Facebook comments. Mahl said that aside from one of the officers referring to the arrested woman by an incorrect pronoun and gender in a police report, he could not immediately identify any improper action by the officers on the scene.
“Anyone involved is welcome to file a formal complaint, which would enable us to look into this further,” he said.
Corado told the Blade she asked Patrice Williams, 51, a volunteer at Casa Ruby, the LGBT community center that Corado heads, to help her drive home three trans women and two young gay men who attended a support group meeting there last Friday night.
Saying she was too tired to drive, Corado said Williams, with Corado sitting in the front passenger seat, was driving north along the 5200 block of 13th Street, N.W. when a police car flashed its lights, prompting Williams to pull over and stop the vehicle.
Officer Ramon I. Moe states in a police report that he conducted a “traffic stop” after observing that two people were sitting in the vehicle’s cargo area “not occupying a seat without a seatbelt restraint.” He stated in the report that he requested an I.D. check for Williams by radio to the Fourth District dispatcher and discovered that Williams did not have a valid driver’s license.
“Suspect 1 [Williams] was placed under arrest for No Permit and transported to the Fourth District Station for processing,” Moe wrote in the report.
According to Corado, the transporting of Williams to the police station came after an ordeal in which the arresting officer and at least one other officer spoke to both Williams and Corado in a hostile manner. She said as many as three or four police cars arrived on the scene.
“I understand that they were going to arrest her for not having a license,” Corado told the Blade. “But my concern is the way they treated her.”
Corado and Williams, who also spoke with the Blade, said the officer’s attitude appeared to change after he saw that Williams’ identification document identified her as a male. Mahl said a more detailed police report not available to the public says Williams handed the officer her auto insurance card rather than a driver’s license.
“When the officer stopped us, I told him it was my car,” said Corado. “I said I am so sorry. I’m the director of an agency and I made the decision to seat the people in the back. I said we just got out of a meeting and it was freezing outside and I wanted to give my clients a ride home rather than have them wait for a bus.”
In her Facebook posting, Corado said, “Looking at his facial expressions, listening to his demanding voice, watching his intimidating body language as he questions and quickly arrests my black trans sister make my advocate persona come out and start questioning why my black sister is being arrested.”
Williams told the Blade the officer asked her if she was white. She said that when she told him she’s black, he appeared to be surprised.
She said she was sitting in the vehicle talking to the male officer who first approached her.
“All of a sudden hands grabbed me, the door swung open and a female officer pulled me out of the car,” Williams said. “They threw me up against the back of the car” and searched her, she said.
“It was verbal abuse and it was physical abuse,” she said of the officers’ conduct toward her.
Corado said the officers’ action and demeanor toward her and Williams caused a lot of stress for the three transgender women and the two gay men as they sat in the vehicle watching.
One of the passengers, Claudia Martinez, told the Blade she suffered an anxiety attack and Corado took her to the Washington Hospital Center for treatment after Corado drove the others home on the night of the incident.
“It just got to me,” Martinez said. “We were in the car for an hour or more.”
Added Corado: “Maybe I caused some of the hostility. I said I have people in the car who are very vulnerable. We were coming from a support group session. Could you be a little nicer?”
That’s when at least of one the officers appeared to become even more hostile toward her, she said.
She said it was then that she called Mahl of the GLLU and asked him to send a GLLU officer to the scene. Mahl said he immediately contacted GLLU Officer Juanita Foreman and asked her to respond to the scene. He said Foreman called him about 15 minutes later to confirm she had arrived on the scene, but she told him she did not see Corado and assumed that Corado left the scene.
Corado told the Blade she didn’t leave the scene until after police drove Williams to the Fourth District station. She said she assumes that Foreman missed seeing her and talked to Williams.
“If she talked to Kaprice, that’s good,” said Corado. “She didn’t need to talk to me.”
Corado and several of the dozens of people who added comments to her Facebook posting expressed concern that the officer stopped the vehicle as part of a “profiling” policy that singles out transgender women for special scrutiny.
Sgt. Matthew Mahl (center). (Washington Blade photo by Damien Salas)
Mahl, however, noted that the SUV was stopped about 10:10 p.m. on a dark street and he doubts the officer could have determined the gender of the passengers before getting out of his squad car and walking up to the SUV to question the driver.
When asked about the officer’s description of Williams as a “male” on the police report, Mahl said doing that violated a police department general order that requires officers to ask transgender people or anyone whose gender may not be obvious which gender they prefer to be identified as.
“The order says we must ask the person what is your preferred gender and preferred name,” Mahl said. “They did put down ‘Kaprice’ as an aka,” he said. “We are always required to report the legal name of a person being arrested.”
Mahl said he would suggest that police officials treat this mistake as a “teachable moment” to make sure the officers involved in the arrest know about the general order for dealing with transgender citizens.
The police report identifies Williams by her birth name of Howard Williams.
Mahl said a longstanding police policy gives motorists a 90-day grace period after their driver’s license expires in which no penalty is given if they are stopped for a driving infraction. He said Williams had not had a valid, current license for more than a year.
“She was not treated any different than anyone else,” he said, whose license elapsed for more than 90 days.
Court records show that Williams was arrested in August 2013 on an identical charge of driving with “no permit.” The records show that case is still pending and Williams is scheduled to return to court for a status hearing on April 8.
She told the Blade on Monday that she currently has a valid learner’s permit and is in the process of arranging for a road test needed to obtain a new license. She said she meant to show the learner’s permit to the arresting officer during the incident last Friday but, while nervous and reaching into her purse, pulled out her insurance card instead.
Court records also show that Williams successfully applied for and was granted a legal change of her name to Kaprice Williams on July 2, 2013. She said she’s hopeful that the legal name change will protect her from future situations where her identity is questioned.
Corado said LGBT activists plan to raise the issue of police handling of Williams’ Feb. 28 arrest at a news conference being planned later this month to discuss a report released last week that assessed D.C. police handling of anti-LGBT hate crimes and the police relations with the LGBT community.
The report, prepared at the request of Police Chief Cathy Lanier by an independent task force, offers recommendations for improving LGBT-police relations and ways to improve police response to hate crimes.
District of Columbia
Judge issues revised order in Capital Pride stalking case
Defendant Darren Pasha agreed to accept less restrictive directive
A D.C. Superior Court judge on April 30 reinstated an anti-stalking order requested by the Capital Pride Alliance against local gay activist Darren Pasha based on allegations that Pasha engaged in a year-long effort to harass, intimidate, and stalk the organization’s staff, board members, and volunteers.
The reinstated order by Judge Robert D. Okun followed an April 17 court hearing in which he rescinded a similar order he initially approved in February on grounds that more evidence was needed to substantiate the need for the order.
At the time he rescinded the earlier order he scheduled an evidentiary hearing for April 29 at which three Capital Pride staff members testified in support of the anti-stalking order. But Okun discontinued the hearing after Pasha, who was representing himself without an attorney, announced he was willing to accept a revised, less restrictive temporary restraining order.
The judge said Pasha’s decision to accept a restraining order made it no longer necessary to continue the evidentiary hearing. He then asked Capital Pride and Pasha to submit their suggested revisions for the order which they submitted a short time later.
The case began when Capital Pride Alliance, the D.C.-based LGBTQ group that organizes the city’s annual Pride events, filed a civil complaint on Oct. 27, 2025, against Pasha, accusing him of engaging in a year-long effort to harass, intimidate, and stalk Capital Pride staff, board members, and volunteers. It includes a 167-page addendum of “supporting exhibits” that includes multiple statements by unidentified witnesses.
Pasha, who has represented himself without an attorney, has argued in multiple court filings and motions that the stalking allegations are untrue. In his initial court response to the complaint, he said it appears to be a form of retaliation against him for a dispute he has had with Capital Pride and its former board president, Ashley Smith, who has since resigned from the board.
Similar to his earlier anti-stalking order against Pasha, Okun’s reissued order on April 30 states, a “Temporary Anti-Stalking Order is GRANTED, effective immediately and remaining in effect until further order of the Court or final disposition of this matter.”
It adds, “The defendant shall not contact, attempt to contact, harass, threaten, or otherwise communicate with any protected person, directly or indirectly, including through third parties, social media, electronic communication, or any other means.”
Unlike the earlier order, which did not identify the “protected persons” by name, the latest order includes a list of 34 people, 13 of whom are Capital Pride staff members or volunteers, including CEO Ryan Bos and Chief Operating Officer June Crenshaw. The other 21 people listed are identified as Capital Pride board members, including board chair Anna Jinkerson.
Possibly because Pasha addressed this in his suggested version of the order, the judge’s revised order says Pasha is allowed to visit the D.C. LGBTQ+ Community Center, where the Capital Pride office is located, if he gives the community center a 24 hour advance notice that he will be visiting the center, which hosts many events unrelated to Capital Pride. The earlier order required him to stay at least 100 feet away from the Capital Pride office.
The new order also prohibits Pasha from attending 21 named events that Capital Pride Alliance either organizes itself or with partner organizations that were scheduled to take place from April 30 through June 21. The order says he is allowed to attend the two largest events, the June 20 Pride Parade and the June 21 Pride Festival and Concert, in which 500,000 or more people are expected to attend.
It says Pasha is also allowed to attend the June 15 Pride At The Pier event organized by the Washington Blade.
But for those three events the order says he is restricted from entering “ticketed and controlled access areas.”
At the April 29 court hearing, Okun also scheduled a mandatory remote mediation session for July 23, in which efforts would be made to resolve the civil complaint case brought by Capital Pride without going to trial.
District of Columbia
Both sides propose revised orders in Capital Pride stalking case
Defendant Darren Pasha agreed to accept less restrictive directive
An evidentiary hearing in D.C. Superior Court on April 29 in which the Capital Pride Alliance presented three of four planned witnesses to testify in support of its civil complaint that D.C. gay activist Darren Pasha engaged in a year-long effort to harass, intimidate, and stalk its staff, board members, and volunteers ended abruptly at the direction of the judge.
Judge Robert D. Okun announced from the bench that the hearing, which was intended provide Capital Pride an opportunity to present evidence in support of its request to reinstate an anti-stalking order against Pasha that the judge temporarily rescinded on April 17, was no longer needed because Pasha stated at the hearing that he is willing to accept a revised, less restrictive temporary restraining order.
Pasha made that statement after two Capital Pride witnesses — June Crenshaw and Vincenzo Volpe — each testified in support of the stalking allegations against Pasha for over an hour under questioning from Capital Pride attorney Nick Harrison and under cross-examination from Pasha, who is representing himself without an attorney.
After Capital Pride’s third witness, Tifany Royster, testified for just a few minutes, and after the judge called a recess for lunch and to attend to an unrelated case, Pasha announced that after obtaining legal advice he determined that he was unsuited to continue cross-examining the witnesses. He said he would be willing to accept a significantly less restrictive temporary restraining order.
Okun then ruled that the evidentiary hearing was no longer needed and directed Capital Pride and Pasha to submit to him their version of a revised stay away order. He said he would use their proposed revisions to help him develop his own order, which he would issue after deliberating over the matter.
He also scheduled a mandatory remote mediation session for July 23, in which efforts would be made to resolve the case without going to trial. He then adjourned the hearing at 3:50 p.m.
The online Superior Court docket for the case stated after the hearing ended that the judge would issue “a new modified Temporary Protective Order,” but it did not say when it would be issued.
Shortly before the April 29 hearing began at 11 a.m., Harrison filed a “Draft Temporary Anti-Stalking Order” that included a list of 34 “Protected Persons” that Harrison said during the hearing were affiliated with Capital Pride Alliance as staff and board members, volunteers, and others associated with the group.
The proposed order stated, “The defendant shall not contact, attempt to contact, harass, threaten, or otherwise communicate with any protected person, directly or indirectly, including through third parties, social media, electronic communications, or any other means.”
The proposal represented a significant change from Capital Pride’s initial civil complaint against Pasha filed in February that Pasha claimed called for him to stay away at least 200 yards from all Capital pride staff, board members, and volunteers without naming them. Okun granted that stay away request in February but reduced the stay away distance to 100 feet.
Capital Pride attorney Harrison disputes Pasha’s interpretation of the order, saying the 100-foot stay-away was for events, not for individual Capital Pride staff, volunteers, or board members. He said the order prohibited Pasha from engaging in any way with the Capital Pride staffers, volunteers or board members.
But the proposed order Capital Pride at first submitted at the April 29 hearing also called for Pasha to stay away from and to not attend as many as 25 Capital Pride events scheduled to take place this year from April 30 through June 21 and for him to say away from the Capital Pride office located at 1827 Wiltberger St., N.W., which is the building in which it shares with the DC LGBTQ Community Center.
At the April 29 hearing, at Pasha’s request, Okun called on Capital Pride to consider allowing Pasha to attend at least the two largest events — the Capital Pride Parade and Festival — which draw over 500,000 participants.
Harrison said in a follow-up message to the judge following the hearing that Capital Pride would allow Pasha to attend those two events and one other as long as he stays away from “ticketed and controlled access areas.”
At an April 17 status hearing Okun rescinded the earlier stay away order at Pasha’s request, among other things, on grounds that it was too vague and didn’t provide Pasha with sufficient specific information on who to stay away from. It was at that hearing that Okun scheduled the April 29 evidentiary hearing, saying it would give Capital Pride a chance to provide sufficient evidence to justify an anti-stalking order and Pasha an opportunity to challenge the evidence.
In his own response to the initial civil complaint filed in February and in subsequent court filings, Pasha has strongly denied he engaged in stalking and has alleged that the complaint was a form of retaliation against him over a dispute he has had with Capital Pride and its former board president, Ashley Smith.
Like its initial complaint filed in February, Capital Pride filed a multipage document at the start of the April 29 hearing with written testimony from staff members and volunteers who allege that Pasha did engage in stalking, harassment, and intimidating behavior toward them and others.
Like Capital Pride, Pasha following the April 29 hearing, filed his own proposed version of the stay away order with significantly less restrictions than the Capital Pride proposal. Among other things, it calls for him to restrict his contact with Capital Pride CEO Ryan Bos and Crenshaw but says it “does not by its terms restrict the defendant’s communications with any other person, entity, governmental body, or media outlet.”
“Darren Pasha sent multiple messages to us and to the court after the proceedings asking for further modifications — which we are not accepting or responding to,” Harrison told the Blade in response to a request for further comment on Judge’s request for each side to submit proposed revisions of the stay away order.
“We appreciate the court’s time and careful attention to the evidence presented today,” Harrison told the Washington Blade in a written statement after the hearing. “This process was about bringing forward the experiences of individuals who reported a pattern of conduct that caused fear, serious alarm, and emotional distress,” he said.
“Capital Pride Alliance remains committed to ensuring that our events and community spaces are safe, welcoming, and free from harassment and we will continue to take appropriate steps to support and protect our community,” his statement says.
“I am happy with what we have accomplished so far,” Pasha told the Blade after the hearing. “I’m just waiting to see what will happen next. But I want to reiterate this goes back to when someone treats you wrong you speak up,” he said. “Even if I lose this case, I am glad that I spoke up and raised concerns.”
He added, “I will just be confident that in the next couple of months the truth will come out. But for now, I am happy with the progress that we have made regarding this.”
This story will be updated when the judge issues his revised stay away order.
Rehoboth Beach
Rehoboth’s Blue Moon sold; new owners to preserve LGBTQ legacy
‘They don’t want to change a thing’
The iconic Blue Moon restaurant and bar in Rehoboth Beach, Del., has been sold to new owners who have pledged to keep it an LGBTQ-affirming space, according to longtime owner Tim Ragan.
Ragan and his partner Randy Haney sold the Blue Moon to Dale Lomas and Mike Subrick, owners of Atlantic Liquors on Route 1.
“They don’t want to change a thing,” Ragan said. “They’re local people, they live here. Dale worked his first job at Dolle’s.”
Ragan and Haney did not sell the business, only the real estate. The deal includes a 10-year lease with renewal options under which Ragan and Haney will continue to operate the Moon. He noted that the couple could opt to sell the business at any time.
“It’s going really well so I’m not in any hurry,” Ragan told the Blade. “It’s hard to run a business and manage a property that’s 120 years old — now someone else has to fix the air conditioning. Our responsibility will be to run the business.”
Ragan offered reassurances that the Moon will continue to be a gay-friendly destination.
“Dale’s comment was that Rehoboth has been good to us and we just want to give back. The Moon is part of Rehoboth’s history and we want to preserve that.”
He said there are no immediate changes planned for the structure, apart from a new roof in the atrium that was damaged in a hail storm. Ragan noted that the property comes with several apartment rental licenses that they have never exercised and the new owners may decide to rent those out.
The Blue Moon business, at 35 Baltimore Ave., dates to 1981 and is an integral part of Rehoboth’s LGBTQ community, hosting countless entertainment events, drag shows, and more over 45 years. Local residents have celebrated birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, and other special occasions in the acclaimed restaurant.
The two buildings associated with the sale were listed by Carrie Lingo at 35 Baltimore Ave., and include an apartment, the front restaurant (6,600 square feet with three floors and a basement), and a secondary building (roughly 1,800 square feet on two floors). They were listed for $4.5 million. The bar and restaurant business were being sold separately.
But then, earlier this year, the Blue Moon real estate listing turned up on the Sussex County Sheriff’s Office auction site. The auction was slated for Tuesday, April 21 but hours before the sale, the listing changed to “active under contract” indicating that a buyer had been found but the sale was not yet final.
Ragan said the issue was the parties couldn’t resolve how much was owed due to a disagreement with the bank. “We didn’t owe $3 million,” he said. “We said we’re not paying any more until we sell.”
The sale contract was written five months ago. It took three attorneys to get a payoff amount agreed to by the bank, he added.
“No one wanted to buy both things. We now have a longterm lease. We couldn’t be happier.”
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